After more than a year of often leisurely debate over technical specifications, the American Petroleum Institute’s Lubricants Committee is lunging headlong toward the finish line with API Service Category SM, the global gasoline engine oil category which will parallel the auto industry’s new ILSAC GF-4 specification. On April 27, the Lubricants Committee met in a 40-minute telephone conference to wrap up the final issues relating to SM, and to decide when API staff may begin issuing ...

Ethyl Corp. announced May 5 that it plans to rename its Petroleum Additives business Afton Chemical Corp. following a restructuring that it hopes to have approved at the end of this month. The restructuring plan – which will be put to a shareholder vote at the companys annual meeting May 27 – would create a holding company, NewMarket Corp., and transform Ethyls two existing operating segments into separate businesses. The tetraethyl lead business would keep the Ethyl name. The petrol...

Citgo is moving its headquarters to Houston, and most of the home offices lube-related jobs are going with it. The company, which for 30 years has been based in Tulsa, Okla., completed a nine-month relocation study April 26 when it announced plans to move to the city dubbed the energy capital of the world. In addition to the advantages of being in an industry hub, officials said they were won over by offers of a $5 million grant and $30 million in low-interest loans from Texas and local governme...

Tribospec Corp. is getting back to its roots, announcing recently that it has entered an agreement to represent Sunoco branded lubricants throughout Canada. As reported last week in the trade magazine Todays Trucking, the deal gives the LaSalle, Quebec, company rights to blend, market and distribute Sunoco lubes. Tribospec already markets brands of several other companies, including ChevronTexaco, Alemite, Anderol and Monroe, and claims to be the largest independent lubricant blender in Canada. ...